THE STORY OF THE 9X – THE MINI REPLACEMENT THAT NEVER WAS

The year is 1967 and Alec Issigonis is about to commence work on one of his most ambitious projects to date – an heir to the Mini. The 9X commenced after Issigonis finished work on the ADO14, which was to become the Austin Maxi .In order to concentrate on this new project he resigned as the British Motor Corporation’s Head of New Car Development, despite the fact that George Harriman, the Chairman of BMC, could not guarantee it stood a chance of their ever building it.

Issigonis presented the 9X to the company’s senior management in 1968 and one of its major talking points was that it was two inches shorter than the Mini yet boasted greater interior space. The five-strong design teams referred to it as “the Mini-Mini”. Further departures from the norm were front McPherson struts and a live rear axle in place of Hydrolastic suspension, a decision made on the grounds of cost and ride quality.

Power was from an all-new, light alloy, 1-litre OHC engine, that was more potent than the A-series unit of the Austin/Morris Mini Mk. II, combined with a gearbox mounted behind the motor to ensure greater refinement than on BMC’s existing FWD cars. Fred Boubier and Syd Goble created the bodywork that seemed to anticipate the Peugeot 104 and, intriguingly, the 9X featured a tailgate. The motoring historian Keith Adams points out in www.aronline.co.uk that this was something “Issigonis did not necessarily think a Mini-sized car needed, but accepted that customers disagreed with his sentiments”.

One familiar feature was the sliding front window panes. Production Minis had begun to fit drop window glasses from 1965 onwards in Australia and 1966 in the UK with the Riley Elf and Wolseley Hornet Mk. III, but the great designer had long favoured the simpler set-up. Inside, the dashboard was eminently familiar to anyone who drove an Austin 1800 ‘Landcrab’.

From a production viewpoint the 9X used over 40% fewer components than the Mini. Issigonis also planned a larger 4-door version of the 9X powered by a 6-cylinder 1.3-litre unit version of the new power plant. There were hopes the 9X would make its bow in 1972, when it would have competed against the Fiat 127, Honda Civic and Renault 5, but by the time it was unveiled the project fell victim to Leyland’s merger with BMC. At that time, the recently formed British Leyland Motor Corporation faced a vast number of challenges and a Mini replacement was low on its list of priorities. By 1970, the 9X was off BL’s agenda, and as for that promising new engine, one company official later reflected:

To all those who say I was wrong to say drop the 9X, just ask what would have happened if we had put the engine into production and then been faced with continuous warranty claims and press derision.

Fortunately, Issigonis saved the sole 9X prototype from being scrapped in the early 1970s and today it resides at the British Motor Museum – https://www.britishmotormuseum.co.uk/explore/temporary-exhibitions/minis-great-little-cars. The ever-fascinating drivetowrite.com has an interesting theory as to why BMC’s directorship allowed the engineer to embark on such a project on the eve of the BMC/Leyland merger:

There are opposing rationales as to why Chairman Sir George Harriman and Chief Executive Joe Edwards agreed to this. The first (and very much the one favoured by most chroniclers) is that they recognised Issigonis’ track record of technical innovation, and the likelihood of the resultant car being a gamechanger. However, the second, and probably more likely one, was that it got Sir Alec out of the way while Edwards took some difficult decisions around product – decisions which were unlikely to have sat comfortably with the genius in their midst.

This is a controversial viewpoint, to put it mildly, but the reasons for the 9X not entering production are more complex than the standard narrative. By the late 1960s the Mini was a combination of strong-seller – in 1969 it was still the UK’s fifth most popular new car – and, due to BMC’s internal chaos, a loss-maker. In addition, Christy Campbell points out in her fascinating book, Mini: An Intimate Biography, that the 9X would have needed “unaffordable levels of investment to get into production”. As it was, BL made very few developments of the Mini during the 1970s.

There was also the unfortunate issue that Issigonis’ standing at British Leyland was damaged by the ADO14 failing to impress Leyland’s new management. The managing director, Donald Stokes, insisted that it receive a second pre-launch facelift. He further complained the interior was “ridiculously stark – like a hen’s coop” and decreed a four-door Morris-badged version was too ugly to enter production. Nor was the MD overly thrilled to learn from his marketing team that domestic Austin Maxi sales were unlikely to amount to more than 1,000 per week.

In such circumstances, Stokes was very unlikely to grant permission for another Issigonis design to enter production. Yet to see 9X at Gaydon is to be taken by its potential as a city car. It is tempting to speculate as to whether it could have proved a strong competitor to the 5, the 127 and the Civic – and later, the VW Polo and the Ford Fiesta. There is a further, very strong, case to be made that the Austin Metro debuted far too late in 1980 to benefit from the original ‘Supermini’ boom of the 1970s.

But there remains the issue of BL’s standards of quality control during the 1970s – or, rather, lack of them. BMC’s reputation for reliable products during the previous decade was not exactly stellar, and as that Leyland employee suggested, the warranty claims could have proved horrific – in addition to the many others facing the corporation at that time.

Perhaps the most fitting epitaph for the 9X is that it showed vast potential – but only if BMW, Nissan or Volkswagen built it, as opposed to British Leyland. An argument that sadly applies to quite a few of their cars…